Several weeks ago, I had a conversation with a good friend of mine. A Bernie Sanders supporter, he did a lot of work getting the word — and the vote — out for Sanders’ presidential campaign in his neighborhood. Our work schedules don’t afford us the opportunity to see each other regularly, but we run into each other fairly often in Astoria, Queens.

On one occasion, we met up at a coffee shop on Steinway Street, where he was doing some work. Our conversations always somehow end up going into politics, but this time, we started getting into the differences in thought between liberals and conservatives.

He asked me, “What if political reasoning isn’t always in a straight line? What if it’s more more circular between the Left and the Right?”

It’s ironic he asked that question. Over the years, and especially throughout the advent of social media, I’d been asking that question a lot. Having been conservative, I remember well the rigidity of political reasoning, especially while growing up in a decidedly Christian conservative family. For as long as I can remember, political candidates on the national level weren’t so much selected according to their track records of public service, as they were based on how close to the “infallible, immutable” Word of God their beliefs were. During the GOP primary, their guy was Ted Cruz.

But the Left, for all its talk of treasuring diversity of belief, color and creed, has many of their own orthodoxies. From Black Lives Matter*, “cultural appropriation” and the Occupy movement, to the censorship produced by the demand of “safe spaces” free of ideological threats to the all-too-precious belief sets of millenials (and faculty) on the college campus, the “social justice” movement has been the most militant arm of progressivism. Hungry for revolution, and devoid of any real understanding of how the democratic process works, progressives bared their teeth at Hillary Clinton, aping instead for a savior who will give them said revolution by any means necessary.

It’s no wonder, then, that progressives have flocked to Sanders, who has been selling his “revolutionary” schtick this entire election.

But since Sanders isn’t anywhere near Hillary Clinton in the race for the Democratic candidacy for President, they have nowhere to go. Their purism of ideology won’t let them.

So instead, they flock to….

Donald Trump?

Yeah, this could very well happen. Progressives are willing to throw their support behind a racist, overtly fascist scumbag, and are willing to make cases for doing so based on Trump’s “anti-establishment” brand, a term that means nothing anymore.

Trump’s brand of populism has been enabled by the roughly 40-year decline of our middle class that both parties have facilitated through the abandonment of Franklin D. Roosevelt in favor of Ronald Reagan. Trump may not offer policy specifics, but he does not need them because the political establishment on both sides of the aisle, have failed the American people so badly, and the people have caught on.

The piece goes further.

If he were to be elected, it would force our leaders to have a real conversation about these problems that they simply won’t have if the people elect an establishment candidate like Hillary Clinton. If anything, the narrative that would emerge from a Clinton presidency would be that change isn’t possible. The parties pick the candidates, and regardless of what their policies are, the people fall in line with them eventually. Power never truly changes hands.

Excusing the fact that Trump, himself, is a corporate interest, he would shake the current system to its core — which needs to happen.

Along with progressives’ obsession with having “conversations”, the above proves what can no longer be denied: progressives want nothing more than ideological purity, and are willing to sell their souls to the Right to get it. As is their precious Bernie, they are only out for themselves, true political and social progress be damned.

“You have two candidates in Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders which have reignited a group of people who have been disenfranchised and disappointed with the way Washington, D.C. and career politicians have run the country,” Lewandowski said. “Bernie Sanders has large crowds — not as large as Mr. Trump’s, but large crowds — and so there is a level of excitement there for people about his messaging and we will bring those people in.”

Political thought in this country can no longer be perceived as a linear plane of varying degrees of liberalism or conservatism. The further out to the fringes puritopians wander, the more they begin to sound like each other, from the unbending social justice warrior to the equally orthodox Bible-thumping theocrat. And as the general election face-off begins to take shape, it will be interesting to see which side will win.